New Principal Prepares For Tasks At High School

July 11, 1994|By ALIX BIEL; Courant Staff Writer

OLD SAYBROOK — A revolving door in the principal's office, an unsatisfactorily high dropout rate and a new curriculum planning model might have been enough to send the new high school principal speeding off into the night after the last school board meeting, heading home to King of Prussia, Pa.

But before he left the meeting, Kevin Hart assured board members he would return July 20 to start his new job and begin grappling with problems at Old Saybrook Senior High School.

Although he said it was too early to tell where he would focus his priorities, he planned to spend much of the summer listening to parents, students and teachers, and getting acclimated to the community before classes resume at the end of August.

Hart, 46, has spent his professional life in Connecticut, except for the past four years, when he was principal at Upper Merion Area High School in Pennsylvania. A Pittsburgh native, he began teaching after graduating from Yale University in 1969, and eventually became associate headmaster at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven.

While the high rate of turnover at the principal's office is unfortunate, Hart is unfazed.

``I can't be concerned with the revolving door,'' he said. He assured school board members he would be staying for at least a few years, board Vice Chairwoman Eileen D. Baker has said.

The dropout rate at the high school is ``something worth directing a lot of attention to,'' Hart said, although he had no immediate plans to address it. In Pennsylvania, he established an alternative school within the high school that was ``counseling intensive.'' In its first year, the program worked well, he said.

Old Saybrook's alternative education program was not so successful this past school year. Principal Thad C. Hasbrouck, whose resignation became effective in June, recommended that the program be discontinued in the fall because too many students had dropped out of it. Students enrolled in the alternative program had already dropped out of high school once and had been wooed back to the alternative program by school officials.

``I'll have to take a closer look at what is here,'' Hart said.

What he won't have to study much is outcome-based education, or OBE, a philosophy that prizes student achievement in pre-designated areas. Old Saybrook's school board, which adopted OBE in the late 1980s, this week replaced it with a different model for planning curriculum.

Hart is fluent in OBE, which Pennsylvania schools considered adopting statewide. His familiarity with the theory cost him one vote on the school board; Brian T. O'Neill explained his vote against hiring Hart last month by saying he was grounded in the philosophy that Old Saybrook was abandoning.

After July 20, Hart plans to find housing and get to know the district and high school. He said he does not have any area of special interest to promote in the school.